authors' preface 



puffins of Lundy; the chalk of south England east from Dorset; the 

 flats and shingles and dunes of Essex and Suffolk and Norfolk, and 

 the sanctuaries of Havergate and Minsmere and Walberswick and 

 Cley and Blakeney and Salthouse, with terns and avocets and many 

 kinds of marsh-birds. One of us has spent many years of his life in 

 the county of Pembroke, living on Skokholm, and on other islands 

 and peninsulas of the Welsh coast; of its sea-birds he has written 

 in many books, and on Skokholm established the first permanent 

 coastal bird observatory- in Britain; the other has spent parts of twenty 

 seasons in North Wales, and has worked its coast from St. Tudwal's 

 Islands to the Little Orme. Both of us know the Yorkshire bird-cliffs 

 most of the way from Flamborough Head to Saltburn; and we have 

 explored the shore of Durham, where bird-cliffs and black industry 

 mix. In Northumberland we know Cullernose Craster, and Dunstan- 

 burgh and Bamburgh Castle, and the cliffs north of Berwick, and 

 other places where sea-birds nest; and we have been to the Holy 

 Island, and to Coquet Isle, and to various of the Fame Islands, where 

 the guillemots and kittiwakes are tame. We have seen the steep cliff- 

 hill of the south part of the Isle of Man, and the sanctuary of the Calf; 

 and have visited the inland gull colonies of North Lancashire and the 

 Lakes. 



In Scotland we have, at one time or another, visited every important 

 sea-bird station: in the east St. Abb's Head, Fast Castle, Tantallon 

 Castle, the Bass Rock, the exciting Isle of May, and many others; 

 in the west the Lowland coast from the Mull of Galloway in Wigtown- 

 shire up-Clyde as far as Ailsa Craig, whose magnificent gannetry has 

 been the scene of many weeks of enjoyment and experiment in efibrts 

 to improve the counting of nesting sea-birds. Our visits farther north 

 have taken us to Fowlsheugh in Kincardineshire, and round the 

 bird-cliffs of the Aberdeen-Banff border — Pennan Head, Troup Head 

 and others. West along into the Moray Firth we have hunted out 

 the bird-cliffs as far as they go, which is to Covesea in Morayshire. 



In the West Highlands we have explored the mainland promon- 

 tories of Kintyre and Ardnamurchan, and the islands of the Clyde 

 and Inner Hebrides. We have searched the cliffs of west Islay closely 

 from a slow aeroplane. The curious headland of Ceann a 'Mhara on 

 the lovely sunny Island of Tiree has been investigated, as have the 

 odd-shaped Treshnishs, home of seals, and the capes of Mull. The 

 island of Eigg, where the shearwaters nest in a mountain; the magni- 

 ficent but somewhat birdless island of Skye, and some of its attendant 



